LG KM900 Arena review: A touch of class

One of the most exciting handsets the season - the LG KM900 Arena - returns to our office and this time it is going to stay a bit longer. After getting off to a flying start in both sales and reviews the Arena certainly looks like the next big thing from LG. In these tough economic times no company can afford too many blunders so it better live up to those high expectations.

The LG KM900 Arena grabbed our attention for the first time back in February at the MWC and even more so last month when we previewed it. Let's see if it's third time lucky and if it will be able to completely sweep us off our feet in a full review.

LG KM900 Arena official photos

Key features:

• 3" 16M-color capacitive TFT touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
• S-Class Touch UI
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps)
• Wi-Fi and GPS receiver with A-GPS
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with Schneider-Kreuznach optics, LED flash, geotagging
• D1 (720x480 pixels)@30fps, VGA@30fps, QVGA fast-motion video and QVGA slo-mo video
• 8GB built-in storage
• Hot-swappable microSD card slot
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack and TV out
• USB Mass Storage
• Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
• Accelerometer for screen auto rotate
• Multi-touch input
• 3D hardware accelerator
• DivX and XviD support
• Dolby for Mobile audio enhancement
• FM radio with FM transmitter
• Office document viewer
• Smart dialing

Main disadvantages:

• Poor sunlight legibility
• Inadequate flash performance
• No voice-guided GPS navigation software available
• No standard USB port
• Records video in 3GP file format
• Maximum email attachment size is 1MB only (both ways)
• Limited DivX/XviD video support

The LG KM900 Arena is the pioneer of the new UI designed by the South Korean company, boldly named S-class. Promising fluidity never seen before and uncompromising looks and functionality, it is starting to take the world by storm. We doubt that it will be of a measure equal to the hurricane created by the iPhone's UI but the whole package might well surprise us.

We enjoy having the LG KM900 Arena back on board in a retail outfit

Mainly because the LG KM900 Arena has none of the (absurd) limitations of the original iPhone - no proper Bluetooth functionality, no FM radio, lack of file manager and so on. Instead the Arena comes as a exceptionally well equipped phone with almost every feature in the book included. From 3G with HSDPA, through Wi-Fi and GPS to FM transmitter - the LG KM900 has it all.

The Arena is ready to take on the iPhone - and most other full touch phones for that matter

Let's now check if there are any gaps in its performance that avoided our watchful eye in the preview. We will get to the unboxing this multimedia beast after the jump.